The Latest and Easiest Way to Abolish God's Law.
By R. F. COTTRELL
After much labor to nail up the law of God, “written and engraven in stones” to the cross of Christ, its opponents, having found that this requires too much laborious drilling, have, to their great satisfaction, found an easier and shorter method to accomplish the same much-desired result. It is as follows:— Ignoring the plainly revealed fact that the first covenant consisted of mutual promises—on the part of the people to keep God’s covenant, the ten commandments, and on the part of God to make them his peculiar treasure—they assert that the law is itself the old covenant. They will not hear the plainly expressed testimony that the covenant was made “concerning these words,” that is, the words of the Lord which Moses had written in the book of the covenant; Ex. 24: 3–8, but contend that the words of the great Jehovah, the words of his law which he uttered with his own voice, are the covenant that waxed old and vanished away, because it was faulty. Then, forgetting themselves—for they have a bad memory—they talk of covenants in a rational, common-sense manner, thus: “When one party to a covenant fails to fulfill his part of the agreement, the covenant is null and void. The other party is not bound by it to fulfill on his part.” This is very true. After the people of Israel had broken the covenant on their part, which they soon did by violating his law, God was no longer bound to fulfill his promise to make them his peculiar care. But what is the conclusion which these acute reasoners draw from the above premises? It is this: The old covenant was the words of the Lord including the ten commandments, spoken by his voice. The people broke that law, they broke his covenant; and, as a broken covenant is null and void, the law of God was dead! Said Eld. Marlatt, in the recent discussion at Woodhull, N. Y., “When one party breaks a covenant, it is dead!” And from this he drew the conclusion that the law of ten commandments “was abolished long before it was abolished at the crucifixion.” This is an easy way for sinners to dispose of the law of the Most High. They are continually abolishing the law in this way. But I suppose that if God had not condescended to make a covenant with the children of Israel, he would not have put it in their power to abolish his law. Truly, the first covenant did pass away by default on the part of the people; for finding fault with them, he saith, Behold, the days come that I will make a new covenant. “In that he saith, A new, he hath made the first old”—when he promised by Jeremiah the new, the first was old, the people had broken their promise in violating his law, and God was under no obligation to be their husband. See Jer. 31: 32, margin. His obligation to make them his peculiar treasure was released by their transgressions. The covenant was made void and passed away by default. It vanished away; and there was no necessity that Christ should nail it to his cross. Hence, there is nothing said in the New Testament of its abolition. Christ introduces the new, in fulfillment of the promise; the first having become of no binding force by the transgressions of the people. Those who oppose God’s holy law get things strangely mixed. Something was nailed to the cross. They greatly desire to make it the ten commandments. The word says it was the handwriting of ordinances. They make it the old covenant, the moral law, or all previously existing law, to suit their own convenience for the time being. And in their struggles, they overthrow their own position previously taken. But no matter, if they can only abolish the law of God. “Better ’t would be, ye fighters of the law,
If your own weakness verily ye saw.
Better ’t would be to obey God’s holy will,
And own the Sabbath precept binding still,
Before you make, in all ye do and say,
Such wretched work to have it done away.”